Support for the creative

Post navigation

So I am a first adopter of Apple’s Homepod. It worked well until I realized that it only plays music from a subscription to Apple Music (I don’t have). It will play as an Airplay speaker, so I can tell Siri (Hey Siri) to play music and She (I have mine as an Irish-female or Aussie-Female) will play my itunes on shuffle (as I have it set on my mac, with itunes open and songs set to shuffle).
After the latest iOS 12 update, I found the homepod to be unresponsive to commands. I have it located up on a beam, in my kitchen, to allow better sound dispersion. Well, it requires a ladder to access and to unplug power. I also discovered the unit was very warm. After powercycle (unplug, wait a bit, then replug to good power outlet), it came back to life and was useful. For another week or so.
Same thing again.Troubleshooting it now a week later, after same issue, I did a manual reset (unplug, press down on the top of the speaker WHILE plugging into power, Siri will speak about reset, KEEP HOLDING DOWN ON TOP, lighting will change to RED and then three FAST beeps. Now let go. You will need to add it again to your iPhone HOME app (keep iphone close and it will pair and start setup).
Most annoying feature of setup: it advertises if you want 3 months of free Apple Music … not really free as you have to add credit card and it will continue to bill after the 3 month period.
If this happens again, I am taking into Apple store. I paid way too much for this…dumbspeaker.

Seems someone was using my domain name (not my domain server, that is hosted by InMotion and my WordPress is updated regularly) to spam a phishing URL (it was someone named Les at Performance Sales that sent me the email…but I couldn’t verify it that was a spammer trying to use my domain…since the contact phone number was Illinois but fax number was in Nevada.

And his website of “performancesales dot com” was some marketing site for … well his phone and info didn’t match their site so I decided not to reply. If it is legit, maybe Les will visit here and read this.

The link sent was clearly deceptive… a space was between the www in is was ww w.macanix.com. This was also a doc file name but no attachment. Another clue, hover over the URL and its nothing as it appears. I copied that, and pasted into virustotal.com URL checker and bingo, malicious.

(I won’t post the malicious URL but it goes to a walstinefa domain which is 403-forbidden.)

If you aren’t sure of a URL sent to you, Visit virus total and paste it in.

Apple released 10.13 (High Sierra) a few months ago, and actually now has an update to 10.13.1 (13…bad luck?) here.

10.13 has a mix of new features, but if you have lots of old apps, you will need to upgrade those. There are also issues with those iMacs and Fusion Drives. Some third party apps like antivirus programs (e.g. McAfee Enterprise) are just catching up. Adobe apps like InDesign, are having some issues and await patching/fix.

And because Apple introduced a new filesystem for drives (APFS), ALL disk utilities should be updated, if they can be (Disk Warrior is releasing an update, but still not out,…). Personally, I am waiting till all my utilities are compatible.

First time I’ve seen this: an iMac user had an update from Apple pushed (10.12.2) for Sierra. Well, the screen turned black after update was done and login. Mouse moved around.

Solution was to restore back to last Time Machine backup (took several hours). Other suggestions (after the fact and not going to risk) was to blindly enter pwd. It may be that Apple’s installer has a random/long time bug that wants the user to login but the screen is black (keyboard still works, you can hear errors if you type something and hit enter). So if you get this same screen with mouse functioning, try to enter your password. It might even want your login ID and pwd.

You need to buy it with all the RAM you will ever think you will need because you can’t upgrade after.

You need to buy it with the maximum storage you need, that is, it should be greater than what you are replacing it with.

No more magsafe power connector. It can be any Tbolt-3 port. On the 15″ model, there are 4.

And now, the biggest cost … I built a 1TB, loaded 15″ Touch model. It costs $3499. And that is without Applecare. Oh, must…have…Applecare if you are a “me firsty”.

Hey, with the 15″ MBPTB, it can have 512GB, 1TB or even 2TB of storage! Ouch, that 2TB is $1200 option over the 512GB. 4GB of VideoRam is $100 more (you will need that to drive a 5K LG display…ooooooi!) Maximum SSD storage on the 13″ model is 1TB.

USB-C or Thunderbolt 3 as they call it is rather interesting. The speed, video, adaptors… more to come!